Let's talk serious SCROG

It's SCROG time!

I will preface this by saying; I grow with the scrog method because Vermont law only allows 2 flowering plants at a time and to stay within my legal limits (and produce enough marijuana every 60-90 days to supply my patient) SCROG is an absolute must.

With that said, a lot of the topics i will bring up are based on that restriction but can be used on larger scale grows for people looking to use more canopy space than a "traditional" grow, or maximize light usage when electricity becomes an issue.

First off, here's my current grow, it is a U shaped grow with an exposed 400w hps, have yet to yield from this style yet as its my first unconventional SCROG shape, previously i used LST and and flat screens but noticed i still ended up with higher growth in the middle of the screen and lower weaker growth at the edges, this seems to combat that issue.




This will be my last soil grow, done with long veg times for "supposed" flavor contributions.

As I'm upgrading my equipment (adding a 4x4 tent and 600w) I'm considering experimenting a bit more, i have seen hydroponic "wheel" systems that use a cool tube and rotate the plants around it. like this-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onv0BvnmZoQ

I figure, leave about a 1 foot gap at the top to let heat rise without burning your plants and setup the grow medium (in the case for my next grow; 2 waterfarms) on the lower sides of the screen, training them both up and down during veg to fill out the " broken-tube" shape that the screens will be built into.

Has anyone seen anything like this? How Do you work your SCROG? Seen any really great SCROGs lately? POST EM'! Lets see what kind of new space saving and lower cost grow setups we can come up with!

Here's an updated pic of the same SCROG a couple days into flower.

Crummy pic but you can get the idea.

looks nice. i switched my exhaust hose from that white plastic shit to the smooth sided metal rolls and the amount of air exchanged now compared to then is amazing.

*could you elaborate more on your SCROG method/techniques I would like to know more of how others are goin' about this..

--cheers

One thing im used to doing is picking through my plants and checkin em over taking em out of the room watering em till a little run off..i wouldnt be able to do any of that? Or does the screen attach to the bucket and move all together

Good call on the exhaust hose, i meant to mention; i don't suggest it, the aluminum tubes are much easier to use and don't "crumple" up as much, in an ideal world i would suggest insulated ducting but my current closet grow doesn't need it, i do plan on going that route for my next grow though.

Here's a simple diagram of how to setup a scrog, for those who don't know, during veg you "train" it to stay under the screen and spread out, controlling the canopy, every time new shoots get 4 or so inches above the screen you just tuck them back under into a gap in the canopy.




The screen can be attached to the bucket or feeding medium (if using hydro) with some dowels or conduit line, the screen should be 6-10 inches above the grow medium so you have room underneath to water and clear out undergrowth, some trimming is required in scrog, you don't want to waste plant energy below the screen so any small branches or fan leaves that you can see aren't getting any light you can just clip off.

Here are a few examples of some great scrogging.





And here's a couple vids of really great scrogging technique

this one is fun for smaller grows: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4FAqd8-Xmw

This guy is a friggin' pro! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhcMaygJH0g&feature=related

Keep those questions and comments coming!

Ok i have a question and i hope to god someone can answer me and PLEASE i am sorry if i am asking somthing that can easily be answered in google but i would like someone's advice who has actually done this. Ok so how long must one veg for and how long will it take for you to get your SCROG looking like the last pic in this post. how many plants is that ? 2? could i do a SCROG with 4 plants in a space of 1.2 x 1.5. I want to do SCROG just scared i will mess it up. i know trial and error but would like to get it right first time then just improve. so please how long must they stay in veg and can i SCROG in veg or just in flowering. I am not a beginer i have been growing for years, but i am very much a virgin when it comes to SCROG i have tried doing some research but it does not give you much i would like to hear advice from the horses mouth

Thank you so much

Alright! someone with viable questions! I'm super excited to share this info with someone who wants to know.

First off, the bottom pic is not a true scrog, its more of what i call and "industrial scrog". This method takes multiple plants and fimm's them (fimming is a form of topping where you get 4 tops as opposed to one) so you have 4 top plants about 1 per 1.5 feet and each plant takes over its own little canopy space.

SCROG veg times very based on how big you want your scrog, I stop vegging when i have filled most of the screen, a few gaps and about 2-4 inches around the edge of the screen, after 24 hours of dark there will about 7 days in 12/12 that the plants "stretch" while flowering, during this first 7 day period take the tops that are 2-3 inches out of the screen and fill in the closest gaps, at this point most of your plant matter will be horizontal to the light and flower nodes will be better exposed to the light source, once this is done, clear out most of your undergrowth, large fan leaves and smaller branches that aren't getting any light can be removed so that all the energy of the plant goes into the tops that are exposed. During the next 2-3 weeks flowering shoots will rise above the screen, we want this, but if fan leaves start to develop above the screen and are covering other node sites cut them. This sounds time consuming but its really a couple min every week or so and your yield will be that much greater, the whole concept behind scrog is to have as much flower exposed to light as possible while controlling the distance of the canopy from the light for consistency. Some buds will be taller than others, if they get out of control try to train them down diagonally into a gap (if you have any) in the screen. Training buds completely horizontally will cause half the bud to not develop trichomes, and thats bad, moisture can also be an issue, make sure the under side of the canopy is well ventilated.

before we discuss your grow area i must ask, are you talking about ft or meters? I'm going to assume meters because i get the feeling I'm the only person on this site from America lol! 1.5x1.2 meters could accommodate 4 plants but it would be tight, you would only need to veg for 3-4 weeks, the top pic on this site is my current grow, its roughly 1 meter by .7 per side and as you can see, i have one plant per side, I vegged for around 6 weeks to fill this space. Really, you can veg as long or short as you want, i stop when i fill the space but i have seen people let they're tops go a foot or more through the screen before flowering, this seems like a waste to me but growing is so personal, who am I to say whats right? Thats not a hair i try to split.

Last but not least, if SCROG is too intimidating do what i did, start with LST, low stress training ties the tops down to control the canopy that way, you get a bunch of tops and a bunch of nugs! for me LST was just a gateway to scrog, i loved being able to move my plants more freely with LST but i find that i would rather have a better controlled canopy and light penetration than a big bushy plant that i can turn easily.

Thanks for the questions, keep em' coming, anything I can't answer i will research and figure out how to answer!

And now... SOME BUD PORN!



Big thanks to LBH for the gnarly bud pron!

Marry me lol, seriously wow. you make it sound so easy but i guess if i have been growing SCROG for a while and some newbie asked me i would be able to tell him but allas i am the newbie asking the questions. One day i will be the one answering ha ha, ok cool now that i have the whole veg thing done and my questions answered i have another one for you. You say that you want the tops to come out the top of the screen but what if all i do is raise the screen each day to accomodate the plants growth during flowering. i was thinking of using chicken wire and as you know the holes in the wire are tiny never enough for the plants tops to come through. Would raising the screen each time the tops grew to touch it be ok? I mean if i do that then i would also be able to control how tall the plants get and if the tops of the plants realise they cant go any further up wont they just simply send a hormone to the plant saying hey listen guys we cant go up lets start branching out. hope that makes sense. And PROFGROW thank you so much for having the passion and the excitement to WANT to teach someone about SCROG i have been asking for a while now and all i get is go google it or just go try its trial and error. no one is actually prepared to TRUELY help another person because they probably think i dont want that guy knowing my secrets or how i do it so bugger him. dont know maybe i am just talking out my ass but thanks so much cant wait to hear the reply

o and 1 last question sorry i guess it could be because i am tired but how tall should the ladies be with a scrog method, i mean i dont want them getting so tall as i have heard that using a 600 watt the light can only penetrate the plants by 60cm then after that its no good thanks again

I like the idea of that U shaped screen. Its like a stadium scrog times 10. When the buds at the top of the screen grow sideways towards the light, wont you have to work a lot harder to support their weight?

Heres my old setup, 2 plants. I vegged too long and ended up having to cut a lot of branches off during stretch.



This is my new setup, one half of a 6 plant scrog. Fine tuning a monthly perpetual system right now. I vegged these for 5 weeks, next months crop will veg for 6. It takes a little practice to figure out exactly how much you need to fill your screen perfectly.

the plant in the back is just starting to stretch now and will fill in a lot more. The other 2 plants there are 10 days ahead and are just about done filling out.

Lolz! I appreciate your enthusiasm, this method really is the best, it would be wrong of me not to bring attn. to it, if everyone in the world had a scrog in they're home i would be more than happy.
It makes me sad when I look around on youtube and see standard grows yielding 1-2 oz per plant, the plants are tall as hell and leggy as shit, bottom branches have no trichs and tops are falling over or getting burnt. Marijuana wants to grow this way because of its evolution, the higher it could get its flowers -the more likely it would be to catch pollen from a male, males grow even taller to spread they're pollen more effectively, this is counter productive to to an indoor growers aims. When we grow indoors light is at a premium, usually stationary and minimal compared to the sun's lumens, grow lamps are literally the worst way to try and grow a plant that needs to be tall to propagate.

When a marijuana plant grows outdoors the sun crosses in the sky, giving hours of light to all sides, this enables the plant to grow in a large "cone" shape, like the Xmas trees we have seen in Californian outdoor grow videos, when growing indoors we need to change the factors around to yield like an outdoor plant. So, our light is stationary, we cant really change that without expensive light moving systems, what can we do to make the plant use a stationary source like it would a moving source?

This is what is accomplished with scrog, you are effectively growing the plant "upside down" in a way, forcing side branches to act like the light is passing over them while keeping the "top" at the same distance.

Ok, now that I have rambled at length about "why" lets talk more about "how".
First, i will address moving the screen and why we try not to do it.
The screen holds the plant matter down. Branches push against the screen and grow sideways during the veg phase, we have tucked them under when they try to grow up through the holes and cleaned out larger fan leaves covering up node spots. As other branches have formed we have redirected them to fill gaps away from the main stalk and nodes are now growing off of them. We're ready to flower with almost every hole full.
Now that we're flowering they stretch a bit, in that first week we want to do another tuck and clean out some fan leaves above the canopy so all the nodes are exposed.
At this point the flowering body is starting at the point where the light hits the screen, everything above the screen from now on should be bud and a couple fan leaves growing between the nodes, if we raise the screen its going to let the flowering body fall below the "light line" created by the screen and also let more non-fruiting plant matter sap energy from below the canopy, any foliage below the screen is wasted nutrient and possible mold/fungus hazard. The canopy above the screen will grow twards the light but because of it's exposure will be mostly flower. From now on we only want to move the light to keep a proper distance from the flower tops as to not burn them, most strains will only grow 6-12 inches above the screen and it will be mostly flower so that gives alot of "head room" to work with, again, moving the screen would only shorten the flowering area and expand the vegetative/bald area, not ideal for growers that want bud but great for people trying to grow stalks lolz!

I hope that answered your question in the longest, most "rambley" way possible lol
More tips later and keep those questions coming!

Nice setup mike.

Trimming branches during flower is a tough decision to have to make, I have found it blows the yield, damage like that during flower really makes plants "crabby" lol.

My solution has been leaving larger gaps before flower, allowing you to tuck if you have some "unruly" tops.

Good luck on a cycle grow, they take more planning with scrog as veg time is more "subjective". if you figure out a good solution that gives you consistent crops please pass it along, the more people using this method = the more weed there is on the planet XD

To answer the U scrog question; Yes tops are a bit heavy and will grow twards the light just a bit, triches on the opposite side will be less but a good piece of mylar placed correctly can fix this.

isnt scrog method used for height issues ???

Answer: Kind of...

Here's the deal with that, when SCROG was first concept ed it was designed as a method to use vertical space in wear house grow operations, ceilings were 30-40 ft high and plants were only 3-5 ft, leaving tons of space above the lights that was being wasted. A method was developed using flood tables stacked on top of each other and plants trained in a very short space lit by florescent bulbs (fluorescents needing to be as close to the fruiting area as possible for decent yield). Based on this early use of scrog most people believe its sole purpose is to keep plants short and wide, this is still the case but has been expanded upon. With HID lighting getting cheaper every year and space saving less of an issue compared to the low output of fluorescents- scrog has undergone an overhaul and is now widely used in many different ways by small growers and large scale growers alike.

I have seen scrogs that had tops over 6 ft, the screen was 4.5 ft off the ground at that point but the fruiting area was able to be 5x5 from just one plant, yielding close to a lb under 1k watt, if height IS and issue for you, scrog is definitely the method you want to pursue but it no longer is the only reason to scrog. As scrog's whole goal is to expose as much flowering area to the light as possible its really just a great way of not wasting light (that we are paying for) and making sure your whole harvest is ready at one time, too many times have i heard of "standard growers" harvesting they're cola a full 2 weeks before the rest of the plant just so the lower branches finish up, waste of time and electricity as far as I'm concerned.

So ya, thats the long winded answer.

Here's a great vid of a monster scrog, as you will see, hight isn't an issue here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhcMaygJH0g&feature=related

DrFever said:

isnt scrog method used for height issues ???

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Its about getting an even canopy, which makes all the buds grow like top buds.
On an indoor grow, if you have light hitting the floor, youre wasting money and space.

awe kinda like this but without any wire or ropes )

DrFever said:

awe kinda like this but without any wire or ropes )

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looks like sea of green, taking the screen out of the green? hehe